Luminescent
by little cry of the abyss
Summary: The place they called home was two different worlds merged into one. A border sits in between them, unexplored and forgotten. Until a daughter of the sun flees from her home to escape an engagement, and a lonesome blue prince of the moon decides to follow an echo. Against fate, their meeting would become the reason their home would collapse in on them - Steven/May. AU.


**notes: **

\- any information from me about this story will be placed on my profile

\- I do not own pokemon or the image (image is a screenshot from Eternal Rondo -Endless Waltz-)

\- feel free to leave a review if i got mixed up with any info, i only recently started playing Emerald

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"A World in Parted Light"

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_At that time..._

Church bells rang throughout a sunny town, and bright music and cheerful dancing and flower garlands of gold are strewn into the small crowd of happy neighbors and relatives. A young woman smiles back at their happiness from a seat near the foot of her home, sharing some of her own cheerfulness as her newly born daughter twists a little in her arms, giving one soft, childish giggle to the beautiful blue sky. It was so nice to think that they prepared a welcoming party for the little one, it made her heart swell, a feeling she almost forgot existed. "She's so beautiful, dear, she has your eyes." is what her mother said, coming forward from the zealous celebration circling in their yard. Her mother's eyes crinkled lightly, "Where'd your husband run off to? The forest to the north? That man...doesn't have time for his family eh?"

The younger woman forms one exhausted smile for her mother, her head shaking to the side as a sign of her loyalty to her beloved. "You know, mom, you once told me I shouldn't rush my conclusions," her fingers gently pry away the tiny baby hands that attempt to pull at her hair a little, "I think this applies to you, too, my husband just went to the store a little, we're running short on drinks." A carefree laugh reaches her ears and she can only be confused to see her mother genuinely happy, normally her lips would curve to doubt more than honest cheerfulness on topics so shallow like this. "You've never changed, Hinata*. Haven't cracked yet, I see, that's wonderful." Her mother tucks in a stray bundle of her dark brown hair behind her ears, and Hinata feels like a child again -even just for a short moment, she realizes that youth is passed down from one generation to the next.

All she could give her mother was a fond smile, turning her affection to her daughter a few moments later. The child's eyes glow with the blessing of the sunny blue sky that stretches above them, the young woman noted, and gave the little one a blessing of a kiss on her small forehead. Her mother's shaking hand lightly presses against one of Hinata's bare arms, and it disrupts her peaceful daydreaming of childish warmth, the presence of a tiny girl around the house, of toys scattered around and shouts of laughter. "Have you decided on a name yet, Hina?" she asks, and in the young woman's head, it was the tenth time she had asked that day. Her reply is short and simple, on the verge of forming a typical sweetness. Nothing more than an 'eventually' under a steady smile and the peacefulness settling in her eyes. One man with a straw hat cups his hands beside his mouth, questioning and blowing dandies with his voice. "Mitsuko-san! May we ask for your assistance over here?" and in half a second both of them are parted away with silent, knowing smiles passed down through their motherly genes. "You better decide on the name soon, Hina dear, I won't stop until you tell me one!" her mother jokes, tipping her sun hat across her eyes as she walks across the newly-clipped grass to give her decor recommendation.

Hinata scoffed a little at that, but regardless, it made her think carefully. Her eyes rise from her child to the sky, the clouds and blue tint being reflected in the glass that made her irises. It was as if she was sending for a blessing of wisdom and creativity from the heavens above. And perhaps she really did get it, because the moment stray flower petals billow from their strands, drawing feathery kisses across her cheek, she cries; short and strangled with the growing coldness on her shoulder -a place where her husband would have been if it weren't for his job and his addiction. She knew better. She knew her mother can read her tired soul so well.

She hugs her baby girl, shivering a little, murdering her tears with three blinks of her eyelids. "Haruka" she whispered, her voice gliding through the breeze. "From now on...you'll be my Haruka." A flower petal dances through the winds, and gets caught in Haruka's yellow blanket, but her mother lets it stay there, sadly. "...I wish your father would come home soon, to see you grow up."

_'Just one last time'_, she thought, cracking her dry lips to form what looked like a smile as Haruka sleeps in her arms.

_'I just want to be happy one last time...'_

And from then on, it's decidedly perfect in that sunny place. All but a type of restlessness in return for an everlasting sun and a sky that never darkens; suffering under soft, shimmery smiles.

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_...emit taht tA_

For the fifth time that week, the prince forgets he lives in a castle to hike into the mountain border.

But they let him, he was only a child after all. He couldn't go far from what his natural fear and childish regard of safety behind the walls of his 'home' dictated to him. He laughs at that in his head, though, staining his expensive little boy shoes with the fresh earth of a new slope. His father knew nothing of him, no one in that anti-utopia knows an inch of what goes on his head. He assumed the same thing -they take him for his appearance, the way his hair sits on his skull like a crown marking his position, how his tailored clothes fold against his body, feigning a sense wealth. But even that is torn under the sharp edges of the caves he enters, his pale legs scratched by thorn bushes through the lush forests he travels, his hair marred by the evidence of leaves and tiny twigs.

The young boy is only six, but from soul to heart, from mind to those homeless eyes, he has matured more than allowed to.

Daigo's will remains unscathed as he threads through the border under the midnight moon. It's light is pale, and his skin catches a bit of it's shine through a space between the tall, tall trees. His tiny breath hitches, slightly, jamming his thoughts away as a memory tries to impale his progress. He didn't have the will to turn back then. He was too close to his destination, just another row of sad trees lining his path, soon he'd be there.

The night lulls itself deeper into slumber, peacefulness layering over the city behind his small back. He doesn't regret turning his heel on those well-known moonlit grounds. He was far safer by himself, with no one to hurt him and no one to treat him so sickly with practice. _'You're so young, yet you always frown.'_ his father always said when they sat together at dinner. It's all they ever talk about -his flaws, his imperfections, what he does wrong and never what the little boy finds interesting and fun. He finds that a big waste -they both had keen eyes for the rarest of jewels sticking out of the walls of caves and buried in soil. But perhaps, it wasn't such a bad thing. He held a type of dread for the day his father realized this part of him, how he sneaks out of the castle through his bedroom window at the most ungodly hours of night, climbing peaks to search for the shiniest of rocks. His six year old thinking couldn't quite put a finger on the reason, though.

Daigo didn't understand himself very well. He was only six. He didn't have time to analyze himself as much as he needed to secretly look at his personal collection of precious stones through a piece of glass. Thoughts like that are best reserved for another time, somewhere down the years. He tells himself _'I don't need to do that.'_ and plays innocent to the fact that he's only counting his reasons to escape the reality of his ice-drenched soul. He didn't feel like a child, he wanted to feel free. He feels at peace with the tree towers and mounds of earth and the unexplored caves.

His eyes squint a little, the moon's dead light shining directly unto the entrance of an empty barren cave he visits on nights like this. He smiles, genuinely, just as his father wants him to. Too bad he wasn't there to see it. The ground under his sole scratch with a familiar sound as he retreats into his tiny sanctuary, his body catching the moon's glow like a mirror. The cave's walls are lit with a pale white color, then on, and Daigo flexes his fingers as it shines like a faint torch.

A ghostly echo erupts from a memory deep in his brain, _'This is what we are, Daigo...'_ his eyes narrow as the image of a woman in a shining white dress smiles at him, so comfortably. _'We're greedy mirrors that hold unto the light once we catch it.'_

The presence of a warm smile makes the little boy shiver, a stranger to things alive and happy. But he shrugs it off, like his father does, and returns to the patch of dirt he dug up the night before. If there was ever one thing he was happy about, it was the pretty and shiny and lovely rocks he finds and will find and his inherited habit to forget to care about what other people think (courtesy of his father, of course, who else would it be?)

As his fingers seep into the richness of the soil, he decides to stay there for a bit longer than usual. After all, no one would mind. No one ever minded.

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end-notes:

(*)the game didn't give a name for your mother in Emerald, correct me if i'm wrong (it also means sunflower, or facing the sun, as far as my google takes me)


End file.
